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The long lasting rumour turned into reality; Apple anounced an event for coming Tuesday, October 14, and, it’s gonna be all about notebooks…finally! 😉

The timing is great since Kristel is flying to LA coming week, just in time to pick up a new MacBook…*if* they are available directly after the event of course…

The folks over at macrumors.com are all over it, and from what they reveal, I expect that the new MacBook (Pro) line will be quite a success.

Last week the sequel of the ZeitGeist movie was released online as a Google video, ZeitGeist: Addendum.

I haven’t seen it yet, but I’m sure this one will be as revealing and smashing as the first one!

Zeitgeist.com: Zeitgeist: Addendum, attempts to locate the root causes of the pervasive social corruption, while offering a solution. This solution is not based on politics, morality, laws, or any other “establishment” notions of human affairs, but rather on a modern, non-superstitious based understanding of what we are and how we align with nature, to which we are a part. The work advocates
a new social system which is updated to present day knowledge, highly influenced by the life long work of Jacque Fresco and The Venus Project.

Unexpectedly my cousin Marcel passed away yesterday, he was only 40 years old and the closest cousin I had…his father, my godfather, passed away 22 years ago…this cannot be happening, the family is going through the same shit all over…there was still so much in him that should have had the chance to get out in this lifetime, DAMN this is unfair!

Last week the word got out, finally it’s time for an announcement! 😉

I’ll have a new position at work, moving from Program Manager Customer Satisfaction (and Service Manager) to Manager Engineering, responsible for technical sales support, product development and training in the company, leading a group of great engineers! The exact date for changing positions should be in the coming weeks, I can’t wait…it’s in line with my ambitions and a great new step in my carreer!

Robbert and I are enjoying a nice and relaxed Sunday afternoon, watching the A1GP race in Zandvoort, NL and playing some Mario Kart…we’ve got no other option than to stay inside and take it easy; weather is beyond shitty (we would have to bring a canoe if we’d go for a walk through the forest!!) and since the last days were pretty low on sleep it feels good to relax! 😉

We’ll be out in Oslo tonight and plan to go to Parkteatret Scene. According to its website this place is the natural choice of space for performance of new music in Oslo.

Tonights theme is ‘Halvfullt‘ (half full), a night filled with Funk, Soul, Hip Hop, Jazz, rare 45’s and “crazy mash ups”…it’s gonna be cool! (register on the Facebook Event page if you plan to come too)

My best friend from NL, Robbert, is coming over to Oslo this weekend, I’m sure it’s gonna be HEAPS of fun. It has been some time since he was here, so it’ll be good to catch up and see the changes in the city (such as the Opera building, and the take-down of the Holmenkollen ski jump).

Anyway, you know where to find us; we’ll be partying the nights away downtown Oslo! OR we take the cultural route and explore some of Norways finest museums, uuhhmmm… 😉

After successfully completing the Birkebeinerritet this summer, I decided to take the next sport challenge in Norway; Skarverennet! This is a cross country skiing race which will be held on April 25 2009 and runs for 38km (!) from Finse to Ustaoset.

It’s gonna be an interesting challenge, since I have no experience in cross country skiing whatsoever (well, ok, I tried it once earlier this year). I’ll have to train a lot this winter, work on both my condition and technique; with mountainbiking I had my technique to compensate for less condition, I am lacking both in cross country skiing at the moment…oof!!

Our new office will also be Microsoft’s new Norwegian office. Today Steve Ballmer, Microsofts CEO, came over and gave a presentation for the MS employees. I couldn’t resist to peek through the doors of the auditorium and take some pictures…after all, it’s not everyday that one can see the Monkey Dance man, with an estimated wealth of $15 billion (!), in action!

After the presentation I was able to snap this picture…as you can see, I got pretty close. 😉

Oh…and obviously all pictures were taken with my Apple iPhone, a nice touch, eh? 😉 😉

I guess I got lucky that Steve didn’t see me taking the pictures; with his passion for everything Microsoft I would expect him to take the iPhone from me and crush it on the floor!

I’m home alone this week and spent this first evening updating several websites that I designed and maintain…typical, eh? 😉

I just had to process some simple changes, nothing major, and I noticed my development in style and webprogramming skills over the past years…the first site still uses frames and tables (aahhh, I’ll have to do some redesign there!), while the last one uses css and php. Quite powerful stuff, but harder to make compliant with the various browsers out there (IE 6 & 7, Firefox 2 & 3, Google Chrome and Opera)

A shameless plug for the three sites I worked on:

jaapdekkers.nl

robkouwenhoven.nl

bestenwest.nl

I’ve been picking up shitloads of wood for the fireplace this week from my friends place (thx Willy!), so no cold winter for me! I’m actually really looking forward to those long, dark evenings in the winter, sitting in the living room with a great wine, some soft music and a warm log fire to look at in the fireplace.

You might say I’m romantic, I’d say I just like to burn stuff… 😉

The news is still there, and I still can’t talk about it…jeez, I’m keeping my mouth shut for 11 days already, hehe, that doesn’t sound like me at all! 😉

I was talking to some friends lately about the influence of TV in our society, it’s often considered as THE religion of our time and has a deeper impact on peoples lives than they realize.

It’s time to wake up and understand what TV really does with you…take the Zen TV experiment and let that be your guide.

turnoffyourtv.com has a related piece; The Zen of Television

Become part of the awakening and the revolution!

Oh, and by the way; ‘the revolution will not be televised’! (a poem and song by Gil Scott-Heron)

This song has been floating through my head for a week now…indeed, it’s a HAPPY song, YAYYY, I love it!

There’s reason for it to keep on floating, more on that later, for now…enjoy mahna mahna!! 😉

I’ve set myself to be home from work latest 18.30h every day this week. We’re almost halfway and so far I have a perfect score, 2 out of 2!

I have to say; it’s nice for a change…ha, never realized an evening has so many hours! 😉

(don’t worry, I still work 9+ hours a day and am having a ball, we’re up to some interesting things in the near future!)

Adam Curry read an essay called ‘The Rise Of The Fourth Reich‘ in last Thursdays Daily Source Code, it’s an amazing piece which will open your eyes for what is really happening.

The ‘original’ text can be found on whatreallyhappened.com, READ IT!

If reading ain’t your thing, then listen to DSC#791 (direct link to the mp3), it’s around 1h06m30s into the show.

Moreover, I can advice y’all to listen to Adam’s shows…he’s creating the momentum for anyone to awake from the televised dreamland we’re used to live so ‘happy’ in (as in ‘welcome to the real world’ from The Matrix-movie).

So, are you ready for the Awakening??

I don’t know what changed, but my blog is being hit with comment spam since yesterday. It’s not the few a day as I got used to, but 10, 20, 50 (!) false, spam related, comments…aweful! None of them will reach the blog, sorry spam-loosers, but I am manually approving any comments to be put on, so you’re OUT! It’s still crazy and taking time I shouldn’t have to take…oh well, blog maintenance, a tough job! 😉

Today was my last day in the ‘spaceship’, the office where I started my working life in Norway last year, it’s truly an amazing building to work in:

So, yeah, we’re moving offices, the new office is next to a trainstation, instead of the Oslo fjord (I’m gonna miss the nice lunches at the fjord in summertime ;)), it might look less futuristic, but it’s completely new and tailored to our needs, it’s gonna be great:

I hope there are no (IT)surprises on Monday…looking at the preparations from the ‘moving-team’, I am pretty sure we’ll have an ‘all systems GO’!

Apple released iPhone software version 2.1 last week and within a day the iPhone Dev Team updated their Pwnage tool to support the new iPhone software (that’s FAST, wow!).

The new software is supposed to fix numerous (little) issues and also add improvements…you can imagine that I wanted to have it from day one. However, being in NL and running around as I have been doing lately made upgrading impossible for now…:( I plan to do it this weekend, so, keep you posted!

I have big news today, and I can’t talk about it now…I’m happy, so it’s all good…to be continued!